My grandmother
Hello, my coffee friends.
Today we are moving away from fiction stories to tell you my experience about the question that the coffee goddesses of our beloved community ask us.
Well, before answering the question I would like to share with you an experience that always accompanies me and that every time I drink coffee I remember it as if it were yesterday. The experience I am going to tell you is about the times I used to go to my beloved maternal grandmother's house.
Every weekend I would go to my beloved grandmother's house. She would always wait for me sitting there watching the people passing by like ants. I would watch her from the street and raising my hand I would wave to her from afar.
I would run in haste to get to the house and be with my grandmother, she would open the door and welcome me with a hug and a kiss. I would ask her to give me a blessing and she would make a cross in the air in front of my face with her hand.
After telling her about my week, she would get up from her seat with some difficulty, as she suffered from a limp in her left leg, I would run to get her the cane so she could get a good grip on the floor. I would take her by the hand and lead her to the kitchen.
I would sit in a weathered wooden chair, but still comfortable to sit in, while my grandmother stoked the charcoal fire to put on the coffee. She would take a pot to which she would add water and put it over the fire. As the water boiled she began to tell me about situations of her life, and how things were when she was young, she taught me about morals and values to the sound of the boiling pot.
After a few minutes, my grandmother placed the strainer on the table with tiles already worn by time with some cracks on certain sides of the counter. The strainer was made of wood stained dark by years of brewing coffee, the wood had practically disappeared under the dark soot.
I would wash the strainer cloth a bit and place it on top of the strainer. The bag would hang from the strainer dyed dark brown from the thousands of strains that passed through that once white cloth. My grandmother would take three spoonfuls of coffee and pour them into the strainer cloth, then she would take a plastic cup and start pouring the boiling water over the strainer cloth. Not without first placing a pot underneath it so that the coffee that came out of the cloth would drip down.
That was where the smell of freshly brewed coffee fascinated me, I could feel that bewitching aroma enter my nostrils and spread throughout my body until it reached my brain to activate my dopamine and make me want to drink the dark, freshly brewed coffee.
In that sensory dance of seductive aroma, I would watch my grandmother add the sugar, each white bean falling towards meeting the dark liquid, then a wooden spoon would be introduced into the coffee, to begin stirring the dark liquid and fusing it with the soft sweetness.
I could hear the spoon rubbing the sugar grains against the metal pot, and the result of this was a sound that vibrated the eardrums with its high and low notes depending on the thickness of the white grains. After a few seconds, the fractional sound disappeared and gave way to a soft and soothing sound.
After all this process my grandmother would take a white metal cup, decorated with flowers of various motifs and in certain parts the absence of the white color was noticeable. My grandmother would fill the cup with coffee and the smoke was a delight before the final encounter with the taste buds.
A sweet bread usually accompanied the coffee served with love. I would take the cup from her ear by firming my fingers on the grip and take the first sip. The sensation was unique and generated an explosion of flavors, sweet and bitter, with a delicate fruity touch. That back-and-forth of flavors and sensations was the most delicious moment of the afternoon.
I will never forget those experiences at my grandmother's house every weekend. I want to say that I like to have my coffee prepared for me because I remember those times at my grandmother's house, where every afternoon I was happy next to a delicious freshly brewed coffee with that unique taste of humility and love.
Edited by Rincón Poético.
Text authored by:
Yenny Aldazora
DRA
¡Thanks for you reading!
